Blizzard’s dungeon crawling sequel has been making the news for a lot of the wrong reasons, but does the game itself justify the early teething troubles?

Diablo III (PC) – mouse extermination

Some game fans never seem happier than when they’re angry. We had a cat like that once. We feel she loved us really, but everything from the weather outside to the carnal desires of the tom down the road was blamed on us – and she genuinely seemed to prefer storming out the house in a rage than enjoying a nice brush in the warm.

Diablo III may not be the game some fans have been wishing for but all its major changes have been clearly signposted for months, so there should be no pretence of surprise. And it would certainly be a shame to dismiss it because of problems logging in and maintaining a connection during the first few days (not that we haven’t serious concerns over the game’s always-on Internet demands, but we’ll discuss those in a broader context another day).

It’s been over a decade since the last Diablo game and yet it remains master of the sub-genre it created, with any similar title simply labelled as a ‘Diablo clone’. Few of these have ever made it to consoles (although we recommend Torchlight on Xbox Live Arcade) but even if you’ve never played a similar title before Diablo III is not a difficult game to get to grips with.

Diablo is a dungeon crawler, a role-playing game stripped to the bone so that its sole obsessions are fighting and looting – not storytelling. Although Blizzard is working on a console version of the game the current controls for Diablo III are based solely on a keyboard and mouse. You click where you want to go like a graphic adventure and fight enemies by using whatever attack is mapped to the left and right mouse buttons.

Once the screen is littered with a suitable number of corpses you can then go about clicking on them again, this time to hoover up dropped gold, weapons and clothing. It’s easy to dismiss Diablo as mindlessly simplistic, especially if you limit your sample go to just a few minutes combat from the beginning of the game. But although its tactics and systems are never especially deep, and the enemies all fairly dim, the breadth of options in how you play is enormous.

And yet once the furore over the login problems is forgotten how you customise your character is destined to be Diablo III’s most controversial aspect. You still earn experience points and level up but there are no skill trees to pick and choose from – instead everyone unlocks the same skills at the same time.

The five classes each have their own specialities, including barbarians (duel-wielding melee experts), demon hunters (ranged weapons and traps), monks (martial arts and healing), witch doctors (curses and creature summoning), and good old-fashioned wizards.

Which you choose makes a huge difference to the specifics of combat but the basics are the same for all: you have simple active skills which build up what amounts to a super bar and this powers stronger secondary attacks. Skills can also be upgraded via runes, allowing you to further specialise your character.

There are also passive skills, such as increasing your resistance to magic or speed, and other miscellaneous abilities which work on a timer. These are arranged along a massively multiplayer online style skill bar and can also be activated via the number buttons.

Your character is further customised by what clothing they’re wearing and what weapons and shields they’re using. Each of these can be enchanted with various buffs and powers of their own and there’s a pseudo crafting system where you can make your own specialised equipment. (You can trade it with others too via the auction house – which in the future will accept real world payments for in-game objects, rather than just the gold used at the moment.)

If you just let the game auto-equip whatever loot you happen to pick up and if you simply end up using the skill you last unlocked to attack with then, yes, the game can seem just as mindless as it first appears. But if you’re putting so little effort into customising your characters then you’re really missing the whole point of the game.

It’s certainly not the story, which is the same wooden collection of genre clichés that Blizzard always reels out for their games. Most of the attempts at humour fall flat and the voiceovers are often embarrassingly amateurish (to British ears anyway, we imagine Americans think they sound excitingly authentic for the Tolkien-esque world).

Diablo III’s backdrops become increasingly impressive as the game goes on, with the fixed camera making the best of the painted art style. But the visuals also aren’t necessarily a key draw. The character and enemy graphics are less impressively detailed but then considering how many are on screen at once that’s understandable.

Rather than customisation a more legitimate complaint about dumbing down would be aimed at the story and level progression. Although there’s an endless array of secrets hiding around every corner the critical path through the game is absolutely linear and you can almost feel Blizzard’s heavy breathing behind you as you play, herding you in the direction they want you to go.

If for no other reason this makes the game’s four player co-operative option even more appealing. The random factor of three loot hungry allies adds a welcome extra level of unpredictability and uncertainty to the game, even though you can’t steal other player’s stuff. Since the game has to be online all the time just to run, and the chart window looms ever present in the bottom left of the screen, it’s obvious this is the way Blizzard wants you to play – and they’re right to promote it.

We feel they’re right about the changes to the customisation features too. They’re more intuitive and accessible, and they take the focus away from purely number-crunching. Now you no longer have to worry that you’ve made a mistake upgrading your character because you can instantly change their entire move set, adding greatly to the sense of variety and experimentation.

Which is not to suggest there’s any great advancement here. The details may have changed but this is still fundamentally the same game as the 1996 original. But that’s kind of the point. Diablo isn’t interested in innovation or subtlety; it’s interested in empowerment and cheap thrills. It knows that clicking on monsters to bash their brains in with an axe is fun and its only concern is ensuring it stays that way no matter how, and with whom, you play it.

In Short: Still the definitive dungeon crawling experience, and although controversial the changes to upgrading characters only makes it more accessible and customisable.

Pros: Expertly crafted as only Blizzard knows how, with great attention to detail. Highly versatile customisation options and character classes, with excellent co-op options.